What is time but the slow unfolding of events in life upon the Earth, for time does not exist as you know it in the spiritual realm. Time is a gift that is given to you to work out your spirit’s intent. Each day is another opportunity to figure it out, to find the meaning in your life and to find your spirit’s purpose for the life you are in. Set about using your time today with the intention of asking your spirit to guide you, to show you what it so longs for, for it too longs for something you have not yet found.
Stay connected to the light even though there may only be darkness. Stay connected to spirit though there may be no sign. Stay connected to love though it may feel absent. Stay connected to hope though it may seem that all is hopeless. This time too shall pass, though it must first play out its hand, the hand that has been dealt. Rest assured that things will eventually change, the light will come, spirit will revive, love will knock at your door, and hope will show its bright face. All things change. Time by its very essence means change, and now is no exception.
Beyond this moment lies another, here in an instant. Beyond this day lies another, here in only a matter of time. Beyond this thought lies another, as fleeting as a moment. Beyond this knowledge lies more, gained over a matter of time. Do not stand rigid and unmoving, stuck in ideas or thoughts, in thinking that you are one way or another, an unchangeable being, for the truth is that you are as fleeting as a moment, as unfolding as a day, as changeable as a thought, as deep as all knowledge. You are all these things and more, an ever-evolving being, as you should be. Strive to remember this each day and let yourself become the changing being that you truly are. It’s not that hard. Like the ease of night into day and one moment into the next let yourself go with the flow!
The energy of change is around us and in us too! -Photo by Jan Ketchel
Change is constant. It accompanies us through our lives, abiding with us, challenging us, sometimes catching us unawares.
The past few days have brought winter weather—ice, freezing rain, snow. Suddenly the world is different and we have to meet it in a different way. We need heavy outerwear against the cold and wind, and perhaps snow shovels to clear a pathway. The seasons are a marker of change that we can all see and we seem to roll along with them just fine.
Sometimes, when we know we should change, and there is nothing outside of us helping us out, we have to help ourselves. Arleen Lorrance, the originator of The Love Project back in 1970, suggests that we create our own reality, consciously, rather than living as if we have no control over our lives. But just how do we create a new reality for ourselves?
I know a person, who at the age of 85, left the home she had lived in for 60 years, left her friends and nearby relatives, to move to a new town, into a small apartment in a place she barely knew. She challenged herself to embrace a new life. Granted, she had relatives in the same town, but she was going to be on her own. Five years later she still lives there, in a diverse community of people she never would have met, many of whom are now friends.
I know several young people who dared themselves to take on life far from home, in strange cities they knew little about, but they succeeded in getting jobs and apartments, made friends and created new lives for themselves. I know families that have decided to change, to move out of crowded cities into the countryside. Lots of people move every day, seeking a new reality.
Sometimes, however, we aren’t able to change so drastically. We have responsibilities and duties to others. We have jobs and bills to pay, homes to care for. Life goes on and we seem to just go along with it. We can get bogged down in the drudgery of the ordinary, the routines and schedules. We constantly replay the same messages to ourselves, many simply not true, that keep us in old places. Our thoughts get stuck in telling us what we can’t do, that we aren’t enough, or that we’ll never change. But, the truth is, we are changing all the time. Every day we are different in some way, just by virtue of life itself, cells changing, energy shifting without our awareness. Just in being alive we change, but even more empowering is to volitionally change, to take over our own lives. In fact, we can create a new reality for ourselves in some very simple ways.
One way to create a new reality is to create a new inner reality. We can begin by changing what we say to ourselves. We can change how we think. We can change how we view the world around us and the people in it. We can reject negativity and begin giving ourselves only positive words, thoughts, and viewpoints. We can even go so far as to make one decision that we know will be beneficial for us and follow through on it, taking action on our own behalf.
What are we all hanging around waiting for? -Photo by Jan Ketchel
I use meditation as a means of shifting my reality, training my mind to be quiet and calm so I can leave the rigors and demands of this world for a few minutes a day. The world always looks different when I get up from my meditation seat and reenter life. Dreams do it for us while we sleep. Taking a walk and seeing the world outside ourselves with new eyes can do it too. Simply being open to life can change how we experience our reality. If we decide to accept everything and everyone as beautiful as it/they are, another tenet of The Love Project, we find that we receive and accept on our own behalf in a different way too.
We might do something to beautify or expand our reality—paint our living space, try a new recipe, take up a sport, or do something we’ve always dreamed of doing. There are so many things we can do to create a new reality without moving from our center, though sometimes we might need something drastic, and that’s good too. Sometimes we just might need to give ourselves a kick in the pants!
The final great change that we must all face is death. I know someone who is facing death right now. This person is dying with great dignity. In moments of lucidity, death is being embraced. “Some people, like me, get lucky,” he said. “We have a healthy life, then get sick and die. Other people hang on for ten lousy years hoping they are gonna get better. That’s way worse than physical pain.” He is creating his own reality. Not succumbing to tests, hospitalizations, tubes and treatments, he is creating the death he wants. It’s his final opportunity to create his own reality in this world.
May we all take the opportunity to create a new reality for ourselves, it’s never too late!
Love, Jan
We are overwhelmed with instructions. We hunger to do it right even when we are addicted to doing it wrong. Hard not to appreciate and value ancient traditions that have honed techniques over generations. How can our knowing and growing compete with that knowledge when we’ve only this one brief moment to live? At least as far as our rationality informs us, that is.
I do value ancient knowledge. Yoga, meditation, magical passes, martial arts—those traditions are indeed imbued with the intent of generations of living beings. To partake in those traditions is to tap into a river of energy that flows into deeper knowing of self. This is not a cognitive truth, this is a living truth, available to anyone willing to step into that river of energy through persistent disciplined practice.
On the other hand, we are the beings alive at this time. We are center stage. It’s our moment to be in this world and to discover life through our own direct experience of being alive, in our bodies, NOW.
I thank everyone who came before. I thank everyone who has remained behind to teach. But it’s my responsibility to discover what it means to be alive in this life, at this time.
This is our opportunity for direct experience with living. This is our opportunity to encounter the unique energetic configuration of Now. How do I greet it? How do I be with it? Where do I go with it? I am responsible for evolution.
Can I experience this energetic configuration?
Energy wants to go where it has never been. Energy seeks new life. Energy abhors boredom. We are on the cutting edge of new possibility in this world, in this life, in the bodies we are in, right Now.
This simple truth packs a powerful wallop. It grips us with fear. How could it be otherwise? To allow ourselves to flow freely into the unknown—into the never-known—is truly awesome. How natural to fall back into self-doubt, into judgment, into the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Ones who have gone before.
We counter our fears with socialized structures, giant monuments of the past to house our souls. We forget, however, that those structures are not immortal. They are relics, wisdom of other times, of other energetic configurations. They can only take us so far in our encounters with the unique energetic configurations of Now.
The more we attach to the solutions of other times, the more we distance ourselves from our own direct experience of Now and the unique energetic configuration of our time. We miss the show and then, before we know it, it’s lights out!
Can I flow with the breath of now?
Ancient wisdom has informed us of the value of the breath. I say, thanks for that hint! Now I must ask myself: What is my relationship to my own breath, right now, in this energetic moment that I live in? Can I turn my awareness to the house of fear deep within the abdomen, for instance? Forgetting all the rules, all the systems, all the instructions in breathing and mindfulness practices, can I simply be in my body in this moment, acknowledging that fear? Can I loosen its grip, expand its horizons with ever-deepening breath? Can I do this with no rules, no set-aside time, no goals, no objectives other than simply being present, deeply in my body, at the main attraction—NOW?
